Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is planning to insert electronic ID tags, or "smart tags," into jeans and underwear starting next month. The tags are supposedly meant to track inventory and aid in stocking, but they raise major concerns for anyone who values their privacy. The tags can be removed but never turned off, they are trackable, and "privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought."
"There are two things you really don't want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that's where we are seeing adoption," said Katherine Albrecht, founder of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering and author of a book called "Spychips" that argues against RFID technology. "The inventory guys may be in the dark about this, but there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors."
Whether one takes the obvious approach – don't buy clothes from Wal-Mart! – or not (or can't, if Wal-Mart's the only affordable game in town), the signs are clear: This type of electronic privacy invasion will become more and more prevalent as technology allows. Everything will be trackable eventually. But don't worry, it's for your own good. I mean, what kind of world would this be if mega-corporations like Wal-Mart start losing random pairs of Miley Cyrus-brand jeans? Economic anarchy, I tell you!
"You're a fucking fake. You're a fucking sham. You don't know what the fuck it means to make a man happy. You didn't make me fucking happy. I couldn't make you happy with the best I did for anybody, ever! Ever! You fucking glum cunt! You didn't fucking crack a smile with the tree ceremony up there—nothing! What the fuck do I have to do?! And remember whose fucking roof you're under! You ingrate bitch!"—Mel Gibson, in yet another newly-released recording of his incensed rantings at his former partner, Oksana Grigorieva.
What I find utterly fascinating about these tapes is how they're essentially the end game of an exorbitantly privileged white, straight, cis, able-bodied, Western, Christian, wealthy, famous male person who feels entitled to have a woman behave how he goddamn wants her to behave, and utterly loses his fucking shit because she isn't complying. In every new tape, we hear evidence of the stereotypes with which he's been indoctrinated, including the ownership he believes he has over women.
What is the above quote if not an exaggerated version of the man who exhorts a woman to "Smile!" in a grocery store, and gets miffed if she doesn't immediately brighten on command? How dare you not be happy in my presence? It's all the same shit.
People are talking about Gibson as if he's gone off the rails, but what they should be talking about is how this is the inevitable and superbly ugly result of unfettered—and unexamined—privilege. He didn't go off the rails; he took the train all the way to the end of the line. And it's scary there.
"Fucking Glum Cunt" is so the name of my band, btw.
Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown University and author who has written extensively about race, visited Anderson Cooper last night to discuss racism and privilege with Erick Erickson, the proprietor of RedState.com. And the conversation was literally a perfect reenactment of every conversation that has ever happened between a social justice advocate who is aware of the concept of white privilege and understands its effects, and a privileged white wanker whose garbage-brain is so choked with unexamined privilege all zie knows how to do is grin smugly and say things like, "My family's from Sweden. How exactly did I benefit from [slavery]?"
[The transcript is here, and begins with the video clip of Howard Dean.]
That whole exchange is unrelentingly infuriating. Thank Maude Dyson managed to end on such a brilliant note: "Look, if you're a white person and you get stopped by the cops, and the cops don't assume that when you reach for your wallet it's a gun, that's a form of privilege that has nothing to do with how much money you have or what country you're from."
I loved, by the way, how Erickson claims: "Everyone wants to hurl the racism charge, particular towards Republicans and towards conservatives, simply because they don't agree on policy." LOL! Yep, that's the only reason that people might suggest that the Republican Party and conservatives trade in racism.
Perhaps someone should direct Erickson to Elle's response to the open letter, posted on the site he founded, addressed to "American Blacks" which was one of the most condescending pieces of contemptible shite I've ever read in my life.
That letter's not about a policy disagreement, Erickson. That letter's about a fundamental difference in whether one views oneself as an equal part of a dynamic and varied humankind, with all its differences and idiosyncrasies and failures and flaws and goodness and heartbreaks and betrayals and inspirations, or as the center of a universe in which everyone else just happens to reside, most of whom one could do without.
And in the sense that progressives want to build a country (world) in which everyone has equal opportunity to thrive, and conservatives want to build a country (world) which favors particular people and skills so that some may thrive mightily while others fail miserably, I suppose that is a policy disagreement. But the policy flows from primal differences in the way we view ourselves and our relationship to and with other people.
Updating my previous post, it is with a heavy heart that I announce that Dokken, Foreigner lead singer cum Christian rocker Lou Gramm, and The Outlaws will not be appearing in Syracuse. At least, not this Summer.
When Democratic Rep. John Boccieri went home to Ohio early this year to talk with voters in his Canton-based district, he figured he would have to do battle with at least some constituents over his support for health-care reform. And the economic stimulus. And the auto company bailouts.
But at a meeting with business leaders, he had to come up with fast answers on something completely different: Why, the businessmen wanted to know, had Boccieri voted for a bill last summer to cap carbon emissions, which they feared would drive up their energy bills in the middle of a recession?
Boccieri said he was tired of wars based on "petrol dictators and big oil."
"If I can take a tough vote today, I'm going to take that vote," said the freshman lawmaker, an Air Force reservist who flew C-130s over Iraq for more than a year.
But 13 months after that tough vote, Boccieri and dozens of other House Democrats along the Rust Belt are not at all happy with the way things have turned out. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had assured reluctant members that the Senate would take up the measure. Although Senate passage wasn't a sure thing, House Democrats hoped to go back home to voters with a great story to tell -- about reducing dependence on foreign oil, slowing climate change and creating jobs.
That didn't happen. Senate leaders, sensing political danger, repeatedly put off energy legislation, and the White House didn't lean on them very hard to make it a priority. In the aftermath of the gulf oil spill, the Senate is set to take up a stripped-down bill next week, but the controversial carbon-emissions cap is conspicuously missing.
This has left some House Democrats feeling badly served by their leaders. Although lawmakers are reluctant to say so publicly, their aides and campaign advisers privately complain that the speaker and the president left Democrats exposed on an unpopular issue that has little hope of being signed into law.
If Obama and the Democrats fail to enact serious energy reform (note: the above bill isn't even serious energy reform, and they're still failing to pass it) during Obama's tenure in the White House, it will be regarded as one of the great failures of his presidency.
No one's going to remember (or care) in a generation that it (allegedly) wasn't politically expedient to vigorously pursue sweeping energy reforms and green initiatives. They're going to remember that Obama had a Democratic congress, was fighting two wars that both have their roots in oil wells, was presiding over a national landscape rife with the "wacky weather" of global climate change, was leading people facing soaring unemployment and unprecedented gas and utility prices, and saw the largest oil spill in history crawl onto our shores, and instead of taking the necessary action to start unwinding this energy-related clusterfuck, they did nothing.
In a generation—hell, in five years—no one will laud him for his good politics. They will admonish him for pissing on the opportunity to do something real, to do something right.
Suggested by Mustang Bobby (and stolen from his place):
When you're home, where do you eat most of your meals: dining room, kitchen, TV tray, or some other place?
We eat entirely too many meals on the couch at the coffee table. Our dining table is right behind our couch; really, it's just an excuse to get closer to the TV.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, Rep. Jim Langevin, who is paralyzed from the chest down, made history today by being the first wheelchair user to preside over the House:
The Rhode Island Democrat, who in 2000 was the first quadriplegic elected to the House, used a newly installed mechanical lift system to gain access to the speaker's podium in his motorized wheelchair.
Langevin, 46, has used a wheelchair since being paralyzed in a shooting accident as a teen [when he was a Boy Scout cadet working with police].
...Langevin said his temporary turn wielding the gavel marks an important step for people with disabilities and he hopes it inspires others.
"What a powerful symbol of inclusion and opportunity for anyone who wants to serve in the United States Congress," he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press on Monday. Congress has become increasingly accessible in the past decade for people with disabilities, he added.
Langevin, whose spinal cord was severed by a bullet which ricocheted off a metal locker after being accidentally discharged from a gun thought to be unloaded, recalled during a brief address today "lying in the hospital after his accident, and taking inspiration from others who had overcome life-changing injuries."
"I hope some other young person...will see that they can succeed, too," he said.
The House was expected to pass (and may already have done so by now) H.R. 3101, the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which will:
* Restore and expand requirements for video description of television programs, in addition to requiring cable companies to make their program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision loss
* Mandate mobile phone companies to make web browsers, text messaging, and e-mail on smart phones fully accessible
* Ensure people with vision loss have access to emergency broadcast information
* Provide $10 million in funding each year for assistive technology for deaf-blind individuals
Rock on.
More, always more, to be done, but teaspoons. o.oP!
I just received the following email (published with permission) from Iain, who, as you may recall, works in a building outside of which Transformers 3 is currently being filmed.
I just saw Michael Bay - he was freaking out and yelling at some flunkie to move a bunch of shit that was lying on the sidewalk. LOLZ.
When he first told me last week about the filming going on outside his building, I replied, "Have you seen Michael Bay screaming at anyone yet?"
Michael Bay: As predictable (and explosive!) as his shitty films.
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Approximately one gazillion. The answer to Adam Serwer's rhetorical question about how many times conservatives are going to try to smear Shirley Sherrod "before some sense of shame or decency kicks in." [Trigger warning for discussion of violence at the link.]
GLAAD just came out with its 4th annual Network Responsibility Index, which "is an evaluation of the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television." Here's a direct link to the .pdf of the forty page report.
AFAICT, GLAAD started and stopped by collecting the most easily quantifiable data: the number of hours of original primetime network programming that included an LGBT character, and the (perceived) race of said characters. In all fairness, this was probably a *ton* of work.
While GLAAD makes commentary on how LGBT characters on each network are represented, I'm not sure how this is represented in the data. On one level, this seems fair: we could sit here all day arguing about what constitutes a positive portrayal of LGBT people (see Family, Modern). It would be nice, however, to know what percentage of transgender characters/people were transsexual women, and how much airtime was devoted to their genitals, their medical history, and/or their prowess as models, singers and/or fashionistas.
Not surprisingly, plenty of networks that had significant LGBT content exhibited race fail. While GLAAD gave ABC a "good" grade for LGBT representation, 87% of said representation was of white LGBT people. Of course, I'm not sure what the null hypothesis is here-- surely people of color are underrepresented on television.
And now for my [least] favorite part-- comparisons within the LGBT spectrum. Graphs! below the jump.
GLAAD makes the standard assumption that the LGBT represents four categories that represent all queer people. And they make nifty graphs! (Although I'm not sure why the resolution on them is wonky.)
Here's ABC, which scored a "good" for 297.5 "LGBT-Inclusive Hours" (26% of ABC programming)
[Hours of LGBT Content: Lesbian 87.5, Gay 222, Bisexual 60, Transgender 2]
NBC scored an "adequate" for 151 "LGBT-Inclusive Hours" (13% of NBC programming)
[Hours of LGBT Content: Lesbian 22.5, Gay 129, Bisexual 5, Transgender 3]
And then there's ABC Family. It scored a "good" for 36.5 "LGBT-Inclusive Hours" (37% of ABC Family programming)
[Hours of LGBT Content: Lesbian 1, Gay 35, Bisexual 0.5, Transsexual 0]
I'm hardly surprised that gay men make up the bulk of "LGBT" representation on U.S. television. As far as lesbian representation is concerned, fully-formed female characters are generally rare on TV. That said, I'm guessing that close to 100% of U.S. television programming features at some type of female character; even Bruce Pornstache mentions Tammy on occasion.
I am a bit peeved (although also unsurprised) that GLAAD trumpets this study as proof of the gains "LGBT" people have been making. What else is new, I suppose. Hooray for intersectionality.
[Trigger warning for stalking and sexual assault.]
John was a tall, dark, and handsome young man, who had come to visit Jane at college. He showed up at her dorm one morning while she was at class, and walked up to the security guard with a broad grin, clutching a bouquet of flowers. He told the older white gentleman a story about how he'd driven all night in his shitty old car, afraid it might break down during a terrible thunderstorm, but he'd arrived in one piece to surprise his girlfriend for her birthday. They'd been dating for two years—high school sweethearts, and he hoped to marry her one day. He knew the day he laid eyes on her for the first time, that he wanted her to be his forever.
The security guard liked this kid. He was charming and charismatic and smart; the thought even crossed the security guard's mind that this girl was lucky to have found such a good guy. Normally, he wouldn't break the rules for anyone, but this kid seemed all right. A nice, good-looking white kid. Just this once, he broke the rules and let John past security without his girlfriend signing in him. After all, the kid was right—it was going to be a much better surprise, super romantic, just like a movie or something, if he was waiting for her at her door when she got back from class. What a birthday present! The security guard waved him through and wished him luck.
He imagined Jane coming back from class and discovering the kid waiting at her door. She was a pretty girl; he pictured her smiling, wrapping her arms around the kid's neck, and pulling him inside her room for some hanky-panky. Ah, young love.
* * *
Nothing, so goes the cultural narrative, makes a romantic gesture even romanticker! than the enlistment of other people's help. Public proposals (in which people, usually female people, are put on the spot to make an affirmative decision about the rest of their lives in front of perfect strangers by whom they'll be judged negatively if they don't say yes, which is a whole other post) are romantic, sure, but even romanticker! are public proposals in which there are as many anonymous co-conspirators as possible: Staged events that enlist the assistance of roomfuls—or stadiums-full!—of people.
The bigger the crowd of conspirators and/or onlookers, the more romantic.
We are meant to delight in being recruited to participate in the romantic gestures of strangers. We read news stories about important people participating in public proposals, we read personal narratives about people inserting themselves into the romantic gestures of strangers, and our pop culture is positively rife with plotlines centered around strangers playing matchmaker (see this summer's Letters to Juliet) or the enlistment of strangers' help by a suitor (usually male) trying to locate and get access to the person (usually female) zie fancies.
And whether it's a madcap chase set to Motown music (every Richard Curtis film), or Billy Idol randomly stepping in with a weaponized drink cart (The Wedding Singer), or a truck driver putting pedal to metal to deliver a suitor to his Sure Thing on time (The Sure Thing), or any one of a million other variations on this conceit, we root for the guy to get the girl, and cheer on gangs of strangers enlisted to help a Nice Guy win the affections of the Girl of His Dreams.
Thus are people inclined to get caught up, in real life, in the same kinds of stories—because we believe in romance and have a fiercely-protected policy of silence about how some "romantics" are actually stalkers/predators.
Charming men later discovered to be serial rapists and/or killers have blagged their way into access to their victims not merely because their race/sex/sexuality/class are privileged, and assumed to confer upon them some statement of their ethics, but because we are exhorted from every corner of our pop culture to insert ourselves into romantic stories.
And not just those of people we know—it is, of course, fun and harmless to help our old friend Jack pick out an engagement ring for his long-time partner Jill—but of people we don't know, and about whose authentic intentions we have no clue, and no way of knowing.
All we've got is a visceral reaction—"He seems like a nice enough guy!"—the likes of which is nothing but the same old bullshit contention used to victim-blame, that there is some way possible to tell a person is dangerous, and thus victims have nothing to blame but their own failure of instinct.
Stalkers/predators are experts at framing themselves as lovelorn romantics to get access to people they've abused, or intend to abuse.
Some of them spend a very long time learning how to make this:
[The 500 Days of Summer trailer recut with creepy score.]
…look like this:
[The real 500 Days of Summer trailer, with its charming indie score.]
And in a world [/movievoice] where so many of us have access to and control over so many other people's personal information—home addresses, work addresses, phone numbers, flight information, class schedules, hotel room numbers, that childhood nickname that hardly anyone knows and if only you call it out, she's sure to turn and look expecting to see someone she trusts—and where we "friend" strangers and share stories of old classmates or coworkers or lovers reuniting after 50 years and feel part of something important when people organize, online or off, to make Happily Ever Afters of all sorts happen, it is a dangerous thing to collectively fetishize the grand romantic gesture.
Because your underdog lovelorn romantic may be my rapist.
Or hers. Or hers. Or hers...
Part of challenging the rape culture is to ensure we have consent from anyone with whom we involve ourselves romantically, even if obliquely, even if only as a co-conspirator with someone who assures us zie has consent. There is no such thing as second-hand consent. There is only helping someone get access to another person and hoping we didn't facilitate violence against another human, under the guise of "romance."
* * *
John was a tall, dark, and handsome young man, who had just found out where Jane had gone away to college. He showed up at her dorm one morning while she was at class, after buying a bouquet of flowers at the corner shop across the street, to give verisimilitude to his story about driving all night to get there for his girlfriend's birthday. It wasn't her birthday and she wasn't his girlfriend. He'd been stalking Jane for two years, ever since she broke up with him after saying he'd raped her—even though he sure didn't see it that way—and he was determined to punish her for the agony she'd put him through, leaving him like that. He knew the day he laid eyes on her for the first time, that he wanted her to be his forever.
John liked this security guard. The female guard who worked nights did not find him charming, but this old white guy was an easy mark; John put on an easy grin and a subtle version of the same fading southeastern US accent to appeal to the guard's nostalgia for the romances of his youth, and the guy crawled right into the palm of his hand. A trusting, privileged white dude. Just this once, he'd break the rules and let John past security without his girlfriend signing in him. The appeal to play a part in a real-life version of a rom-com happy ending was compelling, and, hell, he was a kid who needed to get laid once. The security guard waved John through and wished him luck.
John went to her floor and waited down the hall for Jane to arrive back from class. When she opened the door to her room, he rushed her, wrapped his hand across her mouth, pushed her inside, and raped her.
Mostly, I want to point out that it happened. I get tired of some folks talking about the internet as if it's this magical place, unburdened with the nasty aspects of the "real" world. The internet is part of the real world, and violence does take place online, real violence. And furthermore, yes, online violence sometimes does translate into offline violence.
I actually thought about whether I wanted to bring up this incident, as online violence often spreads like the common cold. This is exactly how bullying silences folks with "controversial" viewpoints.
I don't have a good sense of how frequently bloggers deal with violence. I'm a relatively new kid on the block, so I haven't had to deal with anything yet. Friends and colleagues don't forward me their hate mail. Bloggers tend not to post every threat they get; among other things, addressing every threat effectively distracts from the "controversial" ideas bloggers often wish to put forward.
If you're looking to get a sense of the virulent hate and violence I'm referring to, there's always that one infamous [Trigger warning for sexual assault, death threats, fat hatred, disablist language, and probably some other heinous stuff] Shakesville thread.
IMO, my quotes around "controversial" are one of the more depressing aspects of this violence. Sure, I don't agree with everything that folks post at Shakesville, or on the feminist blogosphere, or on the internet in general, David Brooks. But from what I gather, it's usually not the finer points of feminist theory that generate the most virulent hate.
As brilliant and insightful as so many of my colleagues are, a lot of their (and my) posts boil down to decidedly elementary ideas. Trans people are people. Women are people. Fat people are people. People with disabilities are people, etcetera. All people have the right to have their autonomy and their personhood respected.
Gasp! Maybe I'm too far gone, but I don't think the importance of universal human rights is particularly complicated or debatable. Yet, I think it's important to acknowledge where we find ourselves; a world where coming out in favor of trans people's existence, against rape, or in favor of many other expressions of personal autonomy is a good way to ensure that you're the target of violence. This is a key example of why social justice, feminist/womanist activism is still important; this world is nowhere near the safe space that all of us deserve.
Shaker Amber sends along a rather depressing story from last week:
A woman lost her firefighter husband in the line of duty not three weeks ago, and the ex-wife is already suing for the estate on the grounds that the grieving widow was born male and thus the two-year marriage was fraudulent. A fair outcome is far from certain thanks to Texas laws.
The Houston Chronicle has the story here (beware of the comments). Gina has her typically insightful analysis, as does Lisa.
I don't have much to add, aside from pointing out how scary and frustrating this sort of situation is. After I came out, I married another woman in Wisconsin (where same-sex marriage is illegal*) and it's always troubling to worry about how our marriage might be invalidated. Honestly, we don't care so much about how the government does the paperwork**, provided that it recognizes our marriage as being as valid as anyone else's.
Marriage (asterisk) isn't the same thing as marriage (period), and until marriage between any two*** people is legal in the United States, no trans person's marriage is safe.
-- * No, we're not going to debate the ethics of my marriage today. ** Okay, ultimately I really would prefer not to be listed as the "husband"-- that really burns. *** Of course, there's also an important debate to be had about the need for the government to value all people in all relationships, not just folks in monogamous ones. That's another thread, too.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
